COFFEE IN COLOMBIA IN THE 20th CENTURY

COFFEE IN COLOMBIA IN THE 20^th CENTURY

Capitalism is correctly called the free market. It means civilians (as opposed to government) own property and therefore for the economy. The main alternative is socialism, which means the government owns factories and resources and therefore controls what products are made and so on.

The coffee started in Colombia on the 1730s in Santander, and then it started to spray over Colombia. The coffee started as a starting point of the economy in Colombia in the second half of the XIX century. For Colombia, exporting the coffee to United States represents a lot of money. In Colombia they started with the Haciendas to make the coffee and exporting it, and since the Haciendas were the ones who controlled the economy based on the coffee, the Capitalism play a big role in the coffee economy but since the prices of the coffee went down, the economy and the Hacienda almost collapsed and the war of the 1000 days also play a big factor because for the Haciendas was impossible to maintain in good conditions the plantations. Also the workers owed money trying to fix these problems so the Haciendas of Santander and North of Santander went into crisis and the Haciendas of Cundinamarca and Antioquia stop producing.

This problem made a change in the production of the coffee, because of the crisis of the Haciendas, small producers started to appear. It was a very attractive work for the owners of small lands and peasants.

Coffee has been the only product that accomplish to stabilize the economic growth through the exportations to the international market. It also conformed a market generating jobs and money.

 

Daniel Sarmiento

Sebastian Sierra

Julian Echandia